Exactly. Thank you so much for your supportive comments. My daughter had one therapist who tried to get her father and I back together! I walked out of that office and never came back.

Cognitive behavioral therapist. She’s changed my life.

I had children with “mine”. You can’t prove emotional abuse in court in custody cases, so I’ve got about 10 more years of deprogramming to go till I get relief - they pick up their dad’s behavior. Meanwhile, a ninja therapist, yoga, Jessica Jones, a good lawyer, an understanding boyfriend, and an amazing best friend…

I lived with one for 12 years, very familiar with these tactics.

It’s a legal tactic. They hire lawyers to protect themselves and this is what the lawyers do. Whether or not the rapist believes that tactic is true is irrelevant.

That day will never come. Narcissistic sociopaths like him go their whole lives without that realization. If he were capable of having a revelatory moment of wrongdoing, he wouldn’t have done the things he did. I have known people like this. There’s something broken in their brains and the collateral damage is HUGE,…

Yep. She went to Miss Porter’s. A classmate of hers was an aide-de-camp at Doubleday and spoke the same way.

I hadn’t heard that! But I can attest to the erudition of her list.

Bingo. She was a soft talker. As I mentioned above, I had a desk not far from her office at Doubleday.

Second this comment. I worked two desks down from her office at Doubleday, as a lowly editorial assistant (not to her). Saw her all the time, never could make my eyes work right on her face.

O_O

Thank you for citing that amazing book.

Because she knew she wouldn’t be, eventually.

Let’s also not forget the issue of food storage. Many folks who are at or below or even somewhat above the poverty line live in infested buildings. Roaches, mice, rats, grain moths, flies, fruit flies, you name it - if you do have the wherewithal to buy cheaply and in bulk (such as rice, flour, other grains,…

On behalf of my upstairs neighbor who is a home-health-aide for 8 hours a day and works an 8-hour night shift at the deli down the street, has two children, an abusive ex-husband, AND is superintendent of our building because it gets her rent reduced, I’mma stop you right there. Being a single “poor” college student…

Oh, oh!!! I just started living alone a couple of months ago and I love to food shop and cook, but realized I couldn’t indulge to the extent that I had been. So I got this: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/88458/the… - loads of ideas about buying in relative bulk and using it all up creatively.

I go down to C’ton every year for a library conference (held in a hotel a block away from the church where the shooting happened). And my colleagues are all “oooh, jealous, such a beautiful town” and I’m all IT’S F*ING HAUNTED, NO. I hate going there.

Grew up in Southern DE and exactly the same there.

Adam, I think the main reason I respect you so much and will read anything you write is because you think about things. You grow. You learn. I love your journey. Thank you for sharing it and being so honest about it.

Entirely possible. My grandmother gave birth to my father in 1935, back when they knocked women out to deliver. She woke up with a surprise hysterectomy. The doctor had taken it upon himself to do that because my grandparents were poor and he figured one kid was enough.